Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Kevin Ridgeway's new poetry chapbook, Contents Under Pressure, took me on a Kerouacian trip through broken appliances, drunken charades, fallen angels, kissing couples, hip-high grasses, mind fucks and sinister grooves with a keen eye and ear. When it was done, all I could say was "Amen!"— and "Again!" So I had to publish it.

Kevin Ridgeway lives and writes in Long Beach, California. His work has been published widely in the small press, with recent poems that can be found or are forthcoming in Chiron Review, Nerve Cowboy, Lummox, San Pedro River Review, Misfit Magazine, Right Hand Pointing, Bicycle Review, American Mustard and The Mas Tequila Review, among others. He has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net. Contents Under Pressure is his sixth chapbook of poetry.

Wednesday, October 7, 2015

The Third Thursday poetry series long hosted by Barbara Sabol at the Root Cafe in Cuyahoga Falls will hold (what is likely) its final installment this month, and Dianne Borsenik and I are honored to be the featured poets. There will be an open mic too. Please come while you still can. I'll be reading from my new chapbook, Beat Attitude (from NightBallet Press) and the new collaborative reader A Case for Ascension (from Asinimali Publications). Dianne will also have her new chapbook, Thunderclap Amen (from Crisis Chronicles Press). We'd love to see you!

Monday, October 5, 2015

Crisis Chronicles Press is thrilled to announce the publication of Susan Sheppard's long-awaited Balefire, a winner of our most recent poetry chapbook competition. I absolutely love these poems!

“From the first poem’s first line, Evening is the monster we swim in, a
compulsion gripped me to read straight through to the last line of the
last poem. It’s as if Sheppard is a dark angel who clasped my hand and
floated me through haunting poems of ‘chrome moon’ and ‘autumn’s
sorcery.’ Balefire will chill you, thrill you, and fill holes you didn’t
know were there.” —Dianne Borsenik, publisher at NightBallet Press

Susan Sheppard of Parkersburg, West Virginia, has poetry published in
over 100 magazines and has been writing poetry for more than 30 years. She
is descended from the Blackfoot-Saponi and Lenape-Shawnee tribes of her
region. In 1998, she was awarded a Poetry Fellowship from West Virginia
Arts & Humanities. Sheppard is the author of a number of books,
including four non-fiction and one novel. She teaches poetry every
Thursday at Sacred Way Arts in downtown Parkersburg. Her seasonal ghost
tour, the Haunted Parkersburg Ghost Tours, is rated the #8 most popular
ghost tour in the nation.